Prior to the Revolution, and as late as the reign of Queen Anne, Cromarty drove a considerable trade in herrings. About the middle of July every year, immense bodies of this fish came swimming up the Moray Firth; and after they had spawned on a range of banks not more than eight miles from the town, quitted it for the main sea in the beginning of September. In the better fishing seasons they filled the bays and creeks of the coast, swimming in some instances as high as the ferries of Fowlis and Ardersier. There is a tradition that, shortly after the Union, a shoal of many hundred barrels, pursued by a body of whales and porpoises, were stranded in a little bay of Cromarty, a few hundred yards to the east of the town. The beach was covered with them to the depth of several feet, and salt and casks failed the packers when only an inconsiderable part of the shoal was cured. The residue was carried away for manure by the neighbouring farmers; and so great was the quantity used in this way, and the stench they caused so offensive, that it was feared disease would have ensued. The season in which this event took place is still spoken of as the “har’st of the Herring-drove.” About thirty years ago some masons, in digging a foundation in the eastern extremity of the town, discovered the site of a packing-yard of this period; and threw out vast quantities of scales which glittered as bright as if they had been stripped from the fish only a few weeks before. Near the same place, there stood about twenty years earlier a little grotesque building two storeys in height, and with only a single room on each floor. The lower was dark and damp, and had the appearance of a cellar or storehouse; the upper was lighted on three sides, and finished in a style which, at the period of its erection, must have led to a high estimate of the taste of the builder. A rich cornice, designed doubtless on the notion of Ramsay, that good herrings and good claret are very suitable companions, curiously united bunches of grapes with clusters of herrings, and divided the walls from the ceiling. The walls were neatly panelled, the centre of the ceiling was occupied by a massy circular patera, round which a shoal of neatly relieved herrings were swimming in a sea of plaster. This building was the place of business of Urquhart of Greenhill, a rich herring merchant and landed proprietor, and a descendant of the old Urquharts of Cromarty. But it was destined long to survive the cause of its erection. [Sidenote: THE WHALE-FISHERS.]